It is known in the art to use an apparatus to enhance the visual appearance of the veins and arteries in a patient to facilitate insertion of needles into those veins and arteries. Such a system is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,969,754 and 6,556,858 incorporated herein by reference as well as a paper by Zeman, H. D. et al., “The Clinical Evaluation of Vein Contrast Enhancement”, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tenn. 8 Feb. 2007. Luminetx is currently marketing such a device under the name “Veinviewer Imaging System” and other information related thereto is available on their website, www.luminetx.com, which is incorporated herein by reference.
In this application, the use of biometrics to identify the user and/or the patient to aid in the management and safety of processes involving venipuncture are described. One such biometric that is unique to this field is to use vein patterns to identify the individual. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,185, provides for “A method of verifying the identity of an individual comprises capturing an image of the subcutaneous vein pattern at a predetermined region of the individual, converting the captured image to a plurality of stored values representative of the intensity of said image at specified relative locations, processing the stored values to produce a second plurality of stored values representative of the image of the vein pattern having enhanced contrast and subjecting the second plurality of stored values to a thresholding process to select those above a predetermined value and storing a set of measurements derived from the selected ones of said second plurality of stored values for comparison with a corresponding set of measurements made on the individual.”
Current embodiments are large, fixed mounted devices. The present invention allows this capability to be integrated into a handheld device as well as to be used as part of the management of the venipuncture process and the handling of delivered drugs and drawn blood.